Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are prominent competitors in the web application protection category. Cloudflare appears to have the upper hand with its comprehensive threat protection and intuitive setup, despite Azure's integration strengths.
Features: Azure Application Gateway provides seamless integration with Azure services, exceptional automation, and traffic management on Layer 7. It supports load balancing and scaling effortlessly. Cloudflare offers robust DDoS protection, efficient rule management, and real-time updates with its global data center network.
Room for Improvement: Azure faces challenges with high pricing, complex configurations, and limited third-party tool integration. Users suggest better real-time monitoring enhancements. Cloudflare could improve by updating ModSecurity core rules and reducing customer support delays. Enhancements in documentation and third-party integrations are also recommended.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Application Gateway integrates well in hybrid and public cloud environments, though technical support is mixed with responsiveness issues. Cloudflare is primarily used in public cloud setups and faces similar challenges in customer support, particularly with technical customizations.
Pricing and ROI: Azure's pay-as-you-go model is advantageous, though its high pricing for extended support is noted. Cloudflare is seen as cost-effective, especially for enterprises, but regional pricing can be an issue. Both solutions show significant ROI, with Azure impacting costs by 30-40% and Cloudflare offering competitive pricing with advanced security features.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
If we can use a shared resource, then the return on investment is really nice.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.
We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
I would say they provide the best support for Application Gateway because they own the product, so their support is top-notch.
There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.
I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
It has the autoscaling feature, so there is not much concern around performance; it can scale significantly.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
We have been using it for the past two to three years, and there have been good results with no problems so far.
The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long.
One feature I mentioned is the support for non-HTTPS protocols such as TCP, which could allow one endpoint for all kinds of protocols.
In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has room for improvement because it offers many features, but its configuration is a bit difficult, at least from the developer point of view.
We would prefer to have it cheaper, but it is still expensive.
Azure solutions are quite expensive.
When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
All the DNS and everything is routed through Cloudflare, so anybody coming to any of the sites has to go through Cloudflare first, making them the first wall of defense.
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.
The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.
The gateway's Web Application Firewall feature enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure Application Gateway | 6.0% |
| Cloudflare Web Application Firewall | 5.8% |
| Other | 88.2% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 15 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 6 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 24 |
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.
We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
